"When that mill closes up, it's gonna hurt," Justice says, adding, "Ain't nobody got no money." Yet Mr. Justice supports Republican McCain.

I cannot fathom what motivates either Senator Dole or Mr. Justice. Is racism okay in North Carolina but not in the rest of the country for Dole? Is the fact that Republicans have spent so wildly for the last seven years that they have nearly ruined the American economy, not to mention its reputation in the world community, okay for Justice?

Were it not for the fact that I know people just like Dole and Justice, haves and have-nots, right here in Wilson, I would consider the newspaper in which I read these things a joke. It was the Raleigh News and Observer, of course. The Wilson Daily Times only prints stories that make perfect sense.

As it is, and since I know these people, I must conclude American politics has achieved near-complete absurdity. It seems that either Plato was correct more than two thousand years ago when he wrote that democracies elevate the most common and temporary tastes of the ill-informed and incapable-of-reason majority or there are American power brokers who excuse their manipulation of the system with reference to Plato's opinion. In the latter case, God forbid, (and God is not just a placeholder in American politics) that the dummies should actually make a decision, elect a president. If it is this option, we have no democracy. And if it is the former, what then?

Things political have never been as bad or as good as I thought they may be in the past. But I have never seen things so badly broken as they are now. I don't know if Humpty-Dumpty can be put together again. I hope so, but I admit I am not much encouraged to try to make sense of the political opinions of North Carolina Republicans lately.

Joe Frank Jones

Wilson